All what one finds in wikis are IP addresses and nicknames. The lack of clear and complete authorship/editorship information attached to each entry, including authors/editors' affiliations and credentials, is a very serious quality issue encountered in most wiki-based encyclopedias these days (not just OrthodoxWiki). There are no built-in wiki mechanisms or policies to enforce the presence of such metainformation in every article.

Problem with Citations

Citing a wiki page in your work can also be very tricky (unless one uses the new 'permanent link' feature in MediaWiki to point to a specific revision of that page). A page might significantly change and become a totally different article than the one you were originally referring to (while still maintaining the same URI).

Some Related Links

Re:

As far as Wikipedia is concerned, they explicitly state "a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement" (wikipedia:Wikipedia:Copyright). I think we should adopt the same explicit policy (and to this end, the "click through" language has recently been revised. I agree about the permalinks -- that's why I'm now recommending that the link to the original article go to the version permalink rather than the article itself (although I'm not requiring it since Wikipedia does not require it for compliance).

As far as OrthodoxWiki is concerned, we don't have the issue with IP addresses. Besides this, an author is free to give as much or as little information about themselves as they wish (on their user page). There is more discussion of this at Help:Citing OrthodoxWiki - please feel free to comment there too. Thanks, — FrJohn (talk)

Just to confirm - does OrthodoxWiki have the same stipulation as Wikipedia, ie that OrthodoxWiki must be referenced in quotes and borrowed articles? — Pιsτévο, at 22:48, May 31, 2006 (CDT)

Yes, I believe this is the case, Pistevo. --J. J. 15:32, August 17, 2006 (CDT)

CC footer misleading

Until I noticed your multimedia announcement today, I hadn't realized that OrthodoxWiki ran under dual licensing. Maybe it would be best to remove the CC image from the footer and replace it with plain text, like "GFDL-CC licensed"—or just remove the image and leave the "Copyright Information" link as-is in the footer. --J. J. 15:32, August 17, 2006 (CDT)

I think this would be a good idea, actually, especially considering that the consensus over at Wikipedia finds our dual license incompatible with their single one (which would allow material to be brought from there to here, but not here to there).[1]. I've updated the text on this article to make this incompatibility more explicit. —Fr. Andrewtalkcontribs 14:30, April 24, 2007 (PDT)

Exporting to Wikipedia

I noted that FrJohn weighed in over at Wikipedia stating that material from here could indeed go there.[2] That's of course conflicting with the clarifications I added to this page. I changed it the way I did because of the "both/and" language used throughout rather than the single "either/or" used in Template:Defaultcopy.

It's now not clear to me what the clarification should be, since the "both/and" language seems essentially incompatible with Wikipedia's GFDL-only policy. If we instead choose to opt for the "either/or" which Fr. John's comment on Wikipedia advocated, then we run the risk of having done a bait-and-switch on our licensing: folks contributed thinking that they were issuing their edits under a truly dual license, when they could in fact have been issuing them under either one or the other.

I'm honestly of the opinion that the dual license makes us compatible with WP in only one direction: from there to here. —Fr. Andrewtalkcontribs 14:50, April 24, 2007 (PDT)

Okay, it seems that I was wrong in interpreting dual licensing as "both/and" rather than "either/or" (mainly because much of the language in this article used that kind of wording). I've adjusted this article to make the "either/or" language more explicit and consistent. —Fr. Andrewtalkcontribs 15:24, April 24, 2007 (PDT)

Hi all, it's not a question of "bait and switch" at all, though I see how this could be confusing. There is, however, a clear context and background for what "dual licensing" and the reasons it was adopted. I probably should've explained this better, although I guess I just had in my head all of the terminology used by the more technical articles I looked at... In any case, it's not a question of us chooisng one interpretation or the other -- it's that using this type of dual license has always implied "either/or" rather than "both/and". — FrJohn (talk)